Miriyam is an anthropologist slash internet researcher slash activist. For 'We can analyze the world till we drop, but the challenge is to change it' in the words of Groucho...

Saturday, 25 January 2014

Patrice Lumumba’s legacy

Last Friday marked the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.

Miriyam Aouragh looks at his legacy and western complicity in his murder:

In Une Saison au Congo (A Season in the Congo) from 1966, Aimé Césaire tells an unapologetic story about brutal colonial exploitation and the subsequent transformation of the Belgian Congo into place of bloody civil war. It is first and foremost a tale about the time after the murder of Patrice Lumumba and western complicity in his death. In the play, Césaire narrates how US collusion with Belgium goes back to 1885, being the first country to recognize King Leopold’s claim of the Congo as his personal property. Une Saison au Congo should be read again, as we remember Lumumba’s assassination.

Patrice Lumumba was the first democratically elected leader of Democratic Republic of Congo, which declared its independence from Belgium in 1960. Barely in his mid-30s, he was an inspiring, principled, charismatic and intelligent leader who had warm relationships with other independence figures such as Ben Bella and Nkrumah. He represented the MNC (Mouvement National Congolais) in 1958 at the All-African Peoples’ Conference in Accra, Ghana.

One of his most memorable speeches was during the independence day ceremony, attended also by Belgian King Boudewijn.

After the boring, polite speech of President Kasa-Vubu, Lumumba’s mentioned the suffering under Belgian colonialism and humiliated the Belgian King who had talked about the progress the Belgians had brought to Congo. The legend is that he ended his speech with “Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques” - we are no longer your monkeys.
Lumumba was dangerous. Not because he promoted violent revenge against the whites still present in the Congo, but because he pledged to govern based on the interests of the people and on international cooperation with other anti-imperial entities. He was replaced by the ruthless Mobuto who renamed the country Zaire and amassed enormous wealth in foreign banks.
Lumumba was considered a threat amid the cold-war tensions, in part because he did not toe the US’s line, and was explicit about not doing so, but also because the Congo was, and is, very rich in natural resources.

Lumumba was planning to nationalize the big money making sectors of the country which had been very lucrative for everyone except the Congolese. Thus, when he finally kicked out the Belgians from the mineral-rich Katanga province, it was clear that he actually walked the talk. This was his death sentence.
Mobuto – former-friend-turned executioner - was funded and armed by the Americans and Belgians, in secret, to be a good bulldog, and on 14 September 1960 his coup d’état succeeded. We should also remember the role other figures, with their own selfish interests, such President Kasa -Vubu who dismissed Lumumba as PM, played. They should not be whitewashed from this historical tragedy. However, nothing can be understood without placing his death in the context of the brutal Belgian colonial reality; without the CIA involvement; and finally, without the MI6. The British have always denied involvement, but, as newly released secret documents revealed a few months ago, they were complicit from the very beginning.

Lumumba was abducted only a few months into his presidency and executed by firing squad on 17 January 1961. It was telling that this happened under the command of the previous Katangan authorities. The UN knew what happened but did not intervene. Belgian commandos led the firing squad. The execution team dug up the bodies of Lumumba and two of his comrades and reburied them at the border with what was then Northern Rhodesia. Lumumba’s body was later cut up and dissolved in acid by two Belgian agents. It took weeks after his brutal killing before a statement was released. When news finally reach the world the response was deep. Other radical political figures, such as Malcolm X reacted to his death with fury. Street protests erupted everywhere. In the former Yugoslavia protesters sacked the Belgian embassy, in London people marched to the Belgian embassy and demonstrations at the United Nations Security Council spilled over into the streets of New York City.
[More via link]http://revolutionarysocialism.tumblr.com/post/73963519847/patrice-lumumbas-legacy

disclaimer

Although I'm researching the development and usage of the internet - including the booming online/Blog communities - working on my own homepage is not (really) a priority. Alas: lack of time is a 'real', 'non-virtual', 'offline' disadvantage, and with what is left I prioritise offline engagement, so bare with me...

Bio Miriyam Aouragh

As an undergrad I studied anthropology/non-Western Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (specialized in what was then called 'Ethnic and Minority Studies'); during my graduate studies I took courses in Anthropology & Sociology at Goldsmiths University of London, and Arabic and Politics at Birzeit University. The MA thesis concerned the question of national identity amongst university students in Palestine during the Oslo era after the First Intifada. I worked as a
counselor in Amsterdam [setting up projects and policies vis-a-vis minority youth, something I cared about politically and personally. With local politics I couldn't change much of the structural
inequalities, I got more involved in activism and at the same time an academic itch started. In 2001 I embarked on a PhD research regarding the implications of the Internet in Palestine. I got involved with anti-war and anti-racism campaigns. After the Phd research I taught 'Race, Racism and Islamophobia in the Netherlands' . In 2008 I was awarded the Rubicon grant and since 2009 a postdoc fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. I study the implementation of Web 2.0 in political activist organizing in Palestine and Lebanon and I follow the impact of the internet on complex political dynamics in the Arab world. Apart from research I lecture Cyber Politics and Mass Media at the Oxford Middle East Centre University. In 2013 I will start a new research (Leverhulme) about the role of new/online media before, during and after the Arab revolutions at CAMRI (University of Westminster).

Guernica

Picasso's magnificent piece, which at once illustrates and protests the insanity of war, is a reminder for all